Our goal here at Burnt Out Cooking is to minimize the time and effort it takes to get a meal on the table so we can eat in more often than we eat out. The focus is on mostly healthy meals that are “good enough, not gourmet”. The top 10 timesavers below can help you meet those goals.
1. A Fully Stocked Pantry and Freezer
This will always be my #1 tip for burnt out cooks. Having ingredients on hand, and a list of super easy meals that use those ingredients, is the thing most likely to save you from ordering takeout. When you’re standing in your kitchen at 5 pm thinking “what in the world are we going to have for dinner?” or “I really don’t feel like cooking”, this may be the solution. It’s not going to save you every time. There will be times when you just can’t and that’s okay. Remember, we’re trying to minimize eating out, not eliminate it entirely.
If you sign up for my newsletter, you can receive a free copy of my “Burn Out Cook’s Grocery Staples” list that includes everything I recommend you keep on hand. You can build your pantry/freezer over time and buy items when they’re on sale to help keep the costs down.
2. Planning
How can taking the time to do weekly meal planning save time? Having at least a loose plan, making a grocery list, and shopping with that list will save you more time than it takes. This is especially true once you have a list of meals in your regular rotation and a routine in place. See this post for tips to help you get started.
3. Just Say No To Prep
Say NO to chopping. Get comfortable substituting or eliminating ingredients that need to be chopped whenever possible. For example, if you’re cooking a dish you can almost always subsitute frozen minced or jarred garlic for fresh. It will be “good enough”. Buy pre-cut produce when you can. It might be slightly more expensive but it can be worth it. This post describes the types and advantages of pre-cut produce.
Frozen fruits and vegetables are another really convenient way to incorporate produce into you meals with no chopping required. There are also several other advantages to using frozen produce you can read about here.
Say NO to measuring. Learn how to estimate the amount of an ingredient. Unless you’re baking, measurements rarely need to be exact. If you can learn how to visualize the amount of various types of ingredients, you can save a lot of time by just adding them in without measuring. Taste as you cook and adjust as needed.
4. Keep It Simple
If you’re suffering from cooking burn out, the last thing you want to do is make a dish that has 15 ingredients, a bunch of prep work, and takes an hour to get ready. So don’t do it. Find simple dishes and keep a list of them in your regular rotation. If you find a recipe that looks good but has too many ingredients or too much prep, see what you can substitute or eliminate to make it easier. That’s what most of the recipes on this site do. As you’ll find, some of them aren’t really even “recipes”, they’re just a simple list of ingredients and easy instructions on how to combine them to make a dish. You can find links below to these types of dishes.
- Recipes with 5 ingredients or less
- Recipes with 3 steps or less or 5 steps or less
- Recipes ready in less than 15 minutes or less than 30 minutes
5. Double It
Whenever you’re making a dish or the main ingredient of a meal that freezes well or is good for leftovers, double what you’re making. It usually takes very little extra time to make double a recipe, but it can save you a lot of time later. For instance, whenever I make taco meat I double it and use half that night and freeze the other half. Then I’ll have a future pantry/freezer meal on hand for a night when I really don’t feel like cooking.
Eat leftovers, either as the same dish or repurposed into another dish. For example, if you have just a little leftover taco meat, make a taco salad or a taco baked potato for lunch the next day. The two pounds of taco meat you made could end up in 4 or more meals!
6. Time-Saving Appliances
There are several kitchen gadgets and appliances that will help save you time and effort in the kitchen. Some may help with prep, others make cooking faster, while others allow you to make something earlier in the day to eat later or have easier cleanup. Or, they may just help you eat at home rather than ordering take-out.
My favorite small appliance is my air fryer. I actually have two! The smaller one I use for things like vegetables and lunches. The larger I use for things like cooking chicken or fish for dinner. Air fryers actually cook food faster than a conventional oven and they can make cleanup easier too.
I also really love my instant pot, and slow cooker for certain recipes and situations. The slow cooker is great for days when I have some time and ambition earlier in the day because then at meal time I can just dish it up and maybe throw together an easy side.
7. Prepared Meals – Fresh and Frozen
One of the easiest ways to eat at home is to take advantage of the availability of already prepared dishes/meals that you just have to cook, with no prep required. I’m not talking about meal delivery services where you often still have to do all the prep work, instead these are dishes that are ready to eat just by heating up.
Costco has several options in this area, both in the refrigerated and freezer sections. If I have a trip to Costco planned when I’m making my menu for the next week, I’ll incorporate some of these into the menu to minimize my cooking that week. For example, I often pick up the salmon with dill butter and stuffed peppers and then I have 2 meals I just have to put into the oven. I’ll pick up some simple sides like chopped salad mix or throw some veggies in the air fryer and have a complete meal . In the freezer section of Costco, we really like the lasagna and the mandarin orange chicken.
Take advantage of your grocery store meat counter also. They often will have things like marinated meats, stuffed chicken or pork, prebreaded chicken breasts, etc. These will eliminate a couple steps for you so all you need to do is cook it. We like the parmesan crusted chicken breasts and chicken kabobs (seasonal) at Whole Foods.
And don’t forget rotisserie chicken! There are numerous ways you can use a rotisserie chicken to make a fast meal.
8. Jarred or Canned Sauces
How many times have you heard (or seen) someone say that making your own pasta sauce is just as easy as buying jarred sauces. In my opinion that’s just not true. Making your own sauce will never be as easy as simply opening a jar and dumping it onto some noodles. If you have the ambition to make your own pasta sauce, you’re probably not burnt out on cooking yet! For those of us who are, jarred and canned sauces are a lifesaver. And they are good enough.
We use a lot of these but we probably use pasta sauce and pesto the most. We also like simmer sauces, enchilada sauce, terikayi sauce, etc. These all will save you real time and effort over making your own.
9. Seasoning Blends
I love seasonings. I have a drawer, a skinny pull-out cabinet, and a shelf in another cabinet all full of seasonings. My favorite timesaver though is seasoning blends. I love them because they save me the time and effort of measuring and mixing a bunch individual herbs and spices together. Some of my favorite seasoning blends are:
- McCormick Premium Taco Seasoning Mix
- Mrs Dash
- Trader Joe’s Salmon Rub
- Trader Joe’s Everything but the Elote
- Trader Joe’s Everything Bagel
- Trader Joe’s Aglio Olio Seasoning Blend
10. Aim For Good Enough
Notice I said “aim for” not “settle for”. If you spend any time on this site, you’ll see that I often say we’re aiming for “good enough, not gourmet” when it comes to cooking. We’re not settling – we’re prioritizing. In my younger years I was willing to spend time and effort making more from scratch, trying for the perfect meal. But I’m burnt out now and I’m just hoping to get a reasonably healthy meal on the table with the least amount of effort and time in the kitchen, so we don’t spend money eating out just because we don’t feel like cooking. I want to spend my time doing things other than cooking.
It’s perfectly fine to substitute or eliminate time-consuming ingredients. It’s ok that not every meal is going to be the healthiest thing you’ll eat that week. Eating out often isn’t that healthy either and costs a lot more. Give yourself some grace – figuring out what to eat every day of your adult life is HARD! Hopefully you’ll find inspiration and tools here to help!